The Elder Scrolls V – Skyrim: How to Level Smithing Quickly

In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360, smithing is a new skill that allows you to create and improve weapons and armor in the game.

Level Smithing With Cheap Items

One of the best ways to level up smithing is by making Iron Daggers, and Leather Bracers. They are fairly cheap to produce, and provide skill points for quite some time.

Buy all of the iron ore, iron ingots, leather, and leather strips as you can from the vendors at Warmaiden’s in Whiterun. Smelt the iron ore you buy into iron ingots at the Smelter to the right of the shop. Now go to the forge and make as many Iron Daggers and Leather Bracers as you can. Use the Tanning Rack to turn leather into leather strips if you need to.

If you want to make decent money off of these, enchant them to increase their value as much as possible and sell them back to the vendors to recover your costs, and possibly more depending on the enchant you use.

While you’re out adventuring, make sure to keep all of the animal pelts you collect and turn them into leathers at the Tanning Rack to make this process even cheaper. Pelts from larger animals like Bears can return several leathers from a single pelt.

Also, make sure to visit mines on your adventures as well so you can smelt the ore you collect into ingots. Most mines are small and don’t have many enemies, if any. Make sure to have a Pickaxe on you at all times so you can mine from veins you come across.

Level Smithing With Pickpocketing

If you’re ok using a rather “cheap” method to level Smithing extremely fast, then check out the first tip in my skill trainer pickpocketing guide where you simply find a Smithing skill trainer, buy a skill point, then pickpocket the money back. Eorlund Greymane in Whiterun will train you in Smithing, but only if you join The Companions.

This trick is only effective up to 51 skill points unless you have a pickpocketing skill of 100, since after 51 skill points the cost is increased by 1000 gold, making pickpocketing much more difficult.